Saturday, October 31, 2015

In this Arutz Sheva interview , Dr Edy Cohen (pictured) adds his voice to those of historians who have waded in to the Netanyahu-Mufti controversy. The Mufti would have been inspired by the Armenian genocide to exterminate Jews; when in exile in Iraq (1939 - 41), he set up a party whose constitution states all Jews must be expelled from Arab countries, Dr Cohen claims.

"The Prime Minister’s remarks were not far from reality,” he told Arutz Sheva. “There was a plan by the Mufti to burn the Jews from Arab countries
and Jews in Palestine after the German victory in the battle of El
Alamein in 1943. Haj Amin al-Husseini was an officer in the Turkish
army. I have no proof, but apparently he knew about the Armenian
Genocide and drew his ideas from that. None of the historians have
referred to that.”

Dr. Cohen quoted the Mufti’s words in Arabic against Iraqi Jews, whom
he called a “fifth column” who provided information to British
intelligence, and said that he played a part in the Farhud - the pogrom
against the Jewish population of Baghdad on June 1 and 2, 1941, following the British victory in the Anglo-Iraqi War.

“The Mufti was responsible for the killing of hundreds of Jews; he planned to build incinerators in the Dotan Valley
to implement the ‘Final Solution’ in the Middle East,” said Dr. Cohen.
“He took that idea from the Turks. Why do many people ignore the facts
rather than reading what the Mufti himself wrote in Arabic? 'I did not
cooperate with the Nazis out of the belief in Nazism, but on the
assumption that they would win the war and there will be no traces of
any Jews in Palestine and in the Arab countries.'"

"When the Mufti was in Iraq, he established up 'Hizb al Umma' party,
and the party’s constitution states that all Jews must be expelled from Arab countries
as Mohammed did. For me, the Mufti is like Hitler," said Dr. Cohen, who
stressed that, while he could not commit as to the content of the
conversation between the Mufti and Hitler, it is clear that “both were
inspired by each other. They both wanted to eliminate the Jews in Europe
and Palestine. There was an unwritten plan that Hitler will focus on
the European Jews and the Mufti on the Jews from Arab lands and in
Palestine."

Netanyahu last week suggested that Adolf Hitler was not planning to
"annihilate" the Jews until he met al-Husseini in 1941, in a comment
that was sharply criticized by his political opponents and the White
House which Thursday night condemned his "inflammatory rhetoric."

The prime minister later doubled down, clarifying he did not absolve the genocidal Hitler of any responsibility.

Several historians have already backed Netanyahu’s comments, such as Middle East Forum scholar Dr. Wolfgang Schwanitz who said last week,
"It is a historical fact that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj Amin
al-Husseini was an accomplice whose collaboration with Adolf Hitler
played an important role in the Holocaust. He was the foremost
extra-European adviser in the process to destroy the Jews of Europe."

Friday, October 30, 2015

Of all the articles dealing with the Netanyahu-Mufti controversy, this one by Melanie Phillips in the Jerusalem Post is possibly the best. She explains that Netanyahu was fundamentally right: it is thanks to the Mufti's intervention, that mass murder became genocide.

The Grand Mufti meets Hitler in November 1941

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the role played
in the Holocaust by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
he cannot have imagined the reaction he would detonate.

What he
said was this: “He [Husseini] flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to
exterminate the Jews at the time; he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj
Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll
all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he [Hitler] asked.

He [Husseini] said, ‘Burn them.’” In the subsequent global firestorm,
Netanyahu was denounced for exonerating Hitler. It was said he had
claimed the mufti had given Hitler the idea of exterminating the Jews
when the two met in November 1941; that he was cynically trying to
tarnish today’s Palestinians; even that he was a Holocaust denier.

His subsequent protest that he had no intention of absolving Hitler of
responsibility fell on deaf ears. Even those who acknowledged that the
mufti had allied with the Nazis insisted Netanyahu had turned history
back to front.
Most of this reaction, however, is at best wide of
the mark and at worst quite obscene. For Netanyahu was fundamentally
correct.

There can be no doubt he spoke too loosely. He has
provided no source for the words he quoted from both Husseini and Hitler
at that November 1941 meeting. And he should have acknowledged that the
mass murder of European Jews was already well under way, and that
Hitler had talked about exterminating the Jews since the 1920s.

But mass murder is not the same as genocide. And the precise moment when
Hitler decided to exterminate the whole of European Jewry – the “Final
Solution” – has long been disputed by historians.

For even while
the Nazis were rounding up Jews for slaughter they were also deporting
them – more than 500,000 between 1933 and 1941. And recently unearthed
documentary evidence suggests that the mufti and Hitler egged each other
on in a mutual genocidal frenzy.

A book published last year,
Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Barry
Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz, argues that the mufti’s alliance with
Hitler turned the extermination of the whole of European Jewry into a
strategic imperative.

As late as July 1941, according to Hermann
Göring, Hitler thought the last of the Jews could be removed from
Germany by “emigration or evacuation.”
The authors write: “Yet
since other countries refused to take many or any Jewish refugees,
Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated by the League of
Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed, mass murder would
be Hitler’s only alternative.”

Rubin and Schwanitz make clear
that the November 1941 meeting between Hitler and Husseini merely
continued a dialogue that had started earlier that year about the
mufti’s opposition to Hitler’s deportation of European Jews.
“In
February 1941, Hitler had received al-Husaini’s proposal for an alliance
of which one condition – paragraph seven – was that Germany stop Jewish
emigration from Europe. After Hitler promised al-Husaini on March 11 to
do so, Germany’s expulsion of the Jews was impossible and only mass
murder remained.

“... After agreeing in early June to meet
al-Husaini to discuss the issue, Hitler ordered SS leader Reinhard
Heydrich on July 31, 1941 to prepare an ‘overall solution for the Jewish
question in Europe.’ On October 31, he ended the legal emigration of
Jews from German-ruled areas.

But the specific final decision had not yet been taken.”

On November 28, Hitler met the mufti in Berlin. “Behind closed doors,
Hitler promised al-Husaini that Arab aspirations would be fulfilled.
Once ‘we win’ the battle against world Jewry, Hitler said, Germany would
eliminate the Jews in the Middle East, too.” The following day, “he
ordered Heydrich to organise a conference within ten days to prepare
‘the final solution of the Jewish question.’” As the book also shows,
the mufti was making common cause with Hitler long before 1941. By 1936,
he was courting the Nazis for arms and money. In 1940, he sent Hitler a
nine-page letter detailing a proposed alliance. The Palestine question,
he said, united them in their joint hatred of the British and the Jews.
He proposed to make Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan a single
federated state with a Nazi-style system. In return, he wanted Hitler’s
help to wipe out all Jews in the Middle East.

Evidence that the
mufti played a key role in the Holocaust was provided at the Nuremberg
Tribunal by Eichmann’s close associate in the extermination program,
Dieter Wisliceny. He said: “The mufti was one of the instigators of the
systematic extermination of European Jewry and was a partner and adviser
to Eichmann and Hitler for carrying out this plan.”

This was
corroborated at the tribunal by two witnesses, Andrej Steiner and Rudolf
Kasztner, who confirmed that Wisliceny had talked about Husseini in
these terms during the war.

The last thing Sandy Rashty expected was to be presented with the Young Journalist of the Year Award by an Asian media group. Sandy, who works for the UK Jewish Chronicle, has written about the cultural complexities of being the British-born daughter of Iraqi Jews forced to leave homes, businesses and personal possessions in 1970. Mazaltob Sandy!

Sandy Rashty: alien background
We’ve all seen it before.

People win an award, walk up to the stage, say then never expected
such a thing to ever happen – and then proceed to whip out a neat set of
pre-prepared ‘thank you ever so much’ notes.

Last night, I was presented with the Young Journalist of the Year
Award at the GG2 annual awards ceremony – an event that recognises the
contributions of ethnic minorities to Britain.

Truly, I never expected to win.

I never expected an event sponsored by an Asian media group to
recognise the contributions of a Jewish journalist. Why should they?

Nevertheless, shortlisted for the award, I happily attended the ceremony – bringing my bouncy mother along for good measure.

After all, it was down to her that I’d been shortlisted.

Ever since I joined the JC, I have written about the cultural
complexities that come with being the British-born daughter of Iraqi
Jewish parents – people who had been forced to flee Baghdad in the 1970s
in the wake of increasing antisemitism and persecution.

I have told the untold story of my grandfather who was imprisoned by
Saddam Hussein’s government for being a “Zionist spy” (just FYI, he
wasn’t). I have told the story of my family, who were forced to leave
their businesses, homes and most personal possessions behind in a bid to
make a safe escape in the dark of the night through Kurdistan, Iran and
Turkey – before seeking refuge in Israel or any European country that
would have them.

I have performed impersonations of my distinctly Middle Eastern family – who sing Rosh Hashana and Chanucah songs in Arabic.

It’s a background alien to most – which is why I felt I had little chance of winning.

The petition urged Moroccan authorities to hold rally organizers
accountable for the mock executions of Jews and other inciting displays,
which it called illegal. Also identified by the petition, which was
titled “Moroccan Citizens Gathered Against Incitement to Kill Jews in
Morocco,” were demonstrators dressed as Palestinians, with assault
rifles pointed at others dressed as Orthodox Jews, and children
trampling on the Star of David.

Video footage from the demonstration, reported by The Algemeiner,showed
children marching and shouting “Death to Israel!” and “We will
sacrifice our soul and our blood to you, Al-Aqsa,” in reference to the
holy site also known as the Temple Mount.

Signatories expressed concern about the reaction of Morocco’s Jewish
community, which today numbers under 3, 000, and said the demonstration
had offended many Muslims as well. They said antisemitism threatened the
pluralism and tolerance enshrined in Moroccan law.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

A still image from a video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in
Casablanca, Morocco, in which 'Jews' are held at gunpoint by
keffiyeh-clad protesters, October 25, 2015. (screen capture:
alyaexpress-news.com)

This MEMRI video clip is of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. It
featured men dressed as Orthodox Jews who were being led at gunpoint by
masked men wearing keffiyehs. The demonstration was shocking in its blatant antisemitism. Report by The Jerusalem Post:

The demonstration was held Sunday
with permission from local police, according to a report which appeared
Sunday on the news website alyaexpress-news.com. It also featured a
video of the event, which drew many thousands of participants.

In
the video, two men wearing keffiyehs, or Arab headdresses that are
popular with Palestinian rioters and militants, are seen toting what
appear to be toy rifles behind two bearded men wearing black robes and
top hats during a march that also featured Palestinian flags, including a
very large one carried by dozens of people, and a model of al-Aksa
mosque located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Expressions of
anti-Semitism are relatively rare in Morocco, whose king and government
have invested millions of dollars in recent years in restoring Jewish
heritage sites. In February, the restoration project was honored at an
event in Paris attended by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Monday, October 26, 2015

After three failed attempts to leaveYemen, five young Yemenite Jews from the Dahari family finally arrived yesterday in Israel from the war-torn country.

The news was announced by Manny Dahari on his Facebook page, after he greeted them at Ben Gurion airport.

"Welcome home! After ten years of not seeing my younger siblings,
two years of trying to get them out and three failed attempts, they're
finally out," the young Israeli wrote on his Facebook page.

The Dahari children travelled by air on Yemeni passports (photo: Manny Dahari)

There are fewer than 100 Jews left in Yemen, the remnant of a 50, 000-member community.

Earlier this month, Druze MK Ayoub Kara publicised the desperate situation of the Jews still living in the Yemen capital Sana'a and in Raida, in the north. A Yemenite Jew who had arrived recently in Israel disguised as a Muslim had told him that they had been given an ultimatum by Houthi rebels: 'convert or leave'.

Historians
have quite rightly pointed out that the extermination of the Jews of
Europe was well underway by the time the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj
Amin al-Husseini, met Adolph Hitler in 1941.

But most disturbing is that, among the
chorus of political opponents and Palestinians accusing Netanyahu of
distortion and even ‘Holocaust denial’, there are those who are
irresponsibly introducing another dangerous distortion into the
historical record. They are whitewashing the Mufti’s active role in
WW 2and his enduring legacy of genocidal antisemitism.

I repeat, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu
was wrong. However, it is beyond doubt that the Mufti did everything
possible to encourage the Final Solution. When the Nazis wavered, he
ensured that expulsion was not an option. Each time a German was
bribed to free Jews from the camps, the Mufti intervened to block the
deal. He sabotaged the exchange of at least 1,200 Jewish children for German PoWs
and sent them to their deaths. He
was indirectly responsible for condemning millions of Jews to death by
making sure the gates to a safe haven in Palestine were firmly shut.

Exiled to Baghdad by the British, the Mufti helped engineer a pro-Nazi coup in 1941 and the resulting ‘Farhud’, Iraq’s ‘Kristallnacht’,
in which up to 600 Jews may have been murdered. Had the Nazis won the
war, the Mufti, who as a captain in the Ottoman army would have
witnessed the Armenian genocide, would have become a major player in the
extermination of the Jews of Palestine and the Arab world – an
objective for which he sought approval at his famous meeting with Hitler
in November 1941. He had detailed plans for incinerators near Nablus. He laid the groundwork for the Holocaust of the Jews in the Arab countries.

According to Dr Yosef Sharvit of Bar Ilan:“A similar process to what happened in Europe took place: discriminatory legislation, robbing Jews, establishing ‘Judenraete’ (Jewish Councils), establishing work camps and in the end they were to have established death camps as well.”

The Mufti was the tip of an Arab and Muslim
pro-Nazi iceberg – some 60 Arab acolytes joined him in Berlin as guests
of Hitler. He was not just a propagandist – although his broadcasts had a
huge impact. As the leader of the Arab world, he commanded immense
support for his pro-Nazi antisemitism.

So popular was Hitler that a favourite
slogan in the Arab world at the time was:’Allah in Heaven, Hitler on
earth.” The Fuehrer was known as Haji Hitler. Some even claimed that
Hitler was an Egyptian.
My mother, growing up in Baghdad in the 1930s, was mortified to learn
that the family’s Muslim gardener had named his new baby Hitler.

Fifteen times more Jews than Arabs in Palestine ( there were half as many Jews) fought Hitler alongside the Allies.

Those who claim
that Bibi singled out the Mufti from among hundreds of Nazi
fellow-travellers and antisemites to ‘delegitimise’ the Palestinian
cause ‘for political gain’ are engaging in ‘Mufti denial’.

How many antisemites went as far as the Mufti
and recruited tens of thousands of Muslims to his three SS Balkan
Muslim divisions? They committed crimes so unspeakable that Yugoslavia
demanded that the Mufti be indicted at the Nuremberg trials. According
to Dr. Yosef Sharvit, the Mufti was even considered a greater Nazi
criminal than Adolf Eichmann.

The failure of the Allies to bring the Mufti
to trial meant that the Arab world was never de-nazified. Instead, 2,000
Nazi war criminals were given shelter in the Arab world, there to take
antisemitism to stratospheric heights.

Antisemitism is
not a by-product of the Arab-Israeli conflict: it has deep ideological
roots. The Mufti’s alliance with the Nazis and with the German-funded
Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, was not a mere matter of
anti-colonial expediency. Their legacy of religious bigotry is still
with us today, in the beheadings committed by Da’esh in Iraq and in the
stabbings on Israel’s streets.

Some good may come out of the current
controversy: more people may be moved to focus on the Mufti’s hugely
significant role, a role that academia and the media have hitherto been
inclined to ignore or downplay.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

The Mufti was an even greater war criminal than Eichmann, Dr Yosef Sharvit tells Arutz Sheva, wading into the controversy caused by Prime Minister Netanyahu's observation that the Mufti was to blame for exterminating, rather than expelling the Jews.

"Aside from the inaccuracies, I think that thanks to Netanyahu's
words we come out of this with a benefit, because he dealt with the
centrality of the mufti who for some reason has been taken off the
historical stage in everything related to the Holocaust," said Sharvit.

The historian emphasized to Arutz Sheva that there is great importance in noting the part played by the Arab mufti in the Holocaust.

"When Haj Amin al-Husseini met Hitler in November 1941, he told him
that there's a stark similarity between Nazism and Islam," explained
Sharvit. "Husseini was responsible for establishing SS units in the
Balkans. He was friendly with senior SS commanders, and was responsible
for Berlin Radio broadcasts in all the Islamic lands."

"His Berlin Radio broadcasts would always end by calling to slaughter
the Jews. He also was among the initiators of the final solution for
Jews in the land of Israel, and if (senior Nazi commander) Erwin Rommel
would have G-d forbid reached Israel, Haj Amin al-Husseini had a
detailed plan to destroy the Jewish community."

Dr. Sharvit stated that the mufti was even considered a greater Nazi criminal than Adolf Eichmann.

"He was a figure known better than Eichmann until he (Eichmann) was
brought to Israel" where he was executed, says the historian.

"In essence, he also led the Holocaust of the Jews in the Arab countries. There too a similar process to what happened
in Europe took place: discriminatory legislation, robbing Jews,
establishing Judenrate ('Jewish councils' - ed.), establishing work
camps and in the end they were to have established death camps as well."(My emphasis)

"All of this was stopped thanks to Operation Torch," he said, noting the American and British invasion of French North Africa in 1942.
"Therefore I salute Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who raised to
public awareness the centrality of Haj Amin al-Husseini in the Holocaust
of the Jews," concluded Sharvit.

Sharvit's support echoes that of Middle East Forum scholar Dr. Wolfgang Schwanitz , who on Wednesday gave Netanyahu historical backing.
"It is a historical fact that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj
Amin al-Husseini was an accomplice whose collaboration with Adolf Hitler
played an important role in the Holocaust," Schwanitz stated. "He was
the foremost extra-European adviser in the process to destroy the Jews of Europe."

In defending his own remarks, Netanyahu quoted the testimony of Adolf Eichmann's deputy at the Nuremberg trials
after World War II, who said: "The Mufti was instrumental in the
decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The importance of his role
must not be ignored. The Mufti repeatedly proposed to the authorities,
primarily Hitler, Ribbentropp and Himmler, to exterminate the Jews of
Europe. He considered it a suitable solution for the Palestinian
question."

"Rather then criticize and condemn Benjamin Netanyahu for his comments
about Haj Amin al-Husseini, this is an opportunity for our world leaders
and the media to step up and confront the much more important and
pervasive issue of Anti-Semitism and xenophobia in the Arab world. Such
an exploration may help the public broaden and deepen our understanding
of the unimaginable levels of Anti-Semitism plaguing the Middle East and
North Africa and the ongoing structural and physical violence directed
against Israel. "

Friday, October 23, 2015

While PM Netanyahu may have exaggerated the role of the Mufti in Hitler's decision to extend the Holocaust's reach, inCrethiPlethi Rob Harris argues that the Mufti played a decisive role in ensuring that extermination trumped expulsion by rendering the only possible haven for European Jews - Palestine - firmly out of bounds. There is no doubt that had the Nazis won the war, the Mufti would have ensured that not only the Jews of Palestine, but throughout the Arab world, would have been exterminated. (With thanks: Frank)

The Mufti's famous meeting with Hitler in November 1941

The book ‘Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East’,
authored by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz and Barry Rubin, points to Hitler
being open to emigration as a solution to the “Jewish Question” in 1941.
The book vividly illustrates (see pages 20–22)
the influence that the Mufti brought to bear in helping initiate a mass
extermination programme, albeit a contention that is controversial
amongst other historians:

“Hitler had to decide precisely how “the very last” of
the Jews were to leave Germany. As late as 1941, Hitler thought this
could happen, in the words of Hermann Göring in July, by “emigration or
evacuation.” Yet since other countries refused to take many or any
Jewish refugees, Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated
by the League of Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed,
mass murder would be Hitler’s only alternative.

The importance of the Arab-Muslim alliance for Berlin,
along with the grand mufti’s urging, ensured that outcome. And
al-Husaini would be present at the critical moment Hitler chose it. In
November 1941, al-Husaini arrived in Berlin to a reception showing the
Germans saw him as future leader of all Arabs and Muslims, perhaps even
reviver of the Islamic caliphate. […]

When the day of German victory came, Hitler continued,
Germany would announce the Arabs’ liberation. The grand mufti would
become leader of most Arabs. All Jews in the Middle East would be
killed. […]

A few hours after seeing the grand mufti Hitler
ordered invitations sent for a conference to be held at a villa on Lake
Wannsee. The meeting’s purpose was to plan the comprehensive
extermination of all Europe’s Jews.”

While it is arguable to suggest that Netanyahu may have exaggerated
the role of al-Husseini in Hitler’s decision to extend the Holocaust
programme’s reach, it nonetheless appears to be correct to claim that
the Mufti had a significant influence on the Reich when it came to
migration policy, an influence, which would extend to the establishment
of a Bosnian-Muslim Waffen SS division in 1943, and plans to institute a Jewish extermination programme in Palestine, which were prevented by Rommel’s defeat by the British at El Alamein, as attested in the book ‘Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews of Palestine’, by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers.

Al-Husseini may not have merely encouraged an extermination programme
— there is less historical debate in the fact that he collaborated in
efforts to implement such policy, and systematically promoted the NAZI
cause in the Arab world. Perhaps this week’s argument will encourage
some renewed interest in this issue, which has been ignored all too
often.

“…The sole German objective in the region will be to
liquidate all Jews who live in Arab countries under the patronage of
Great Britain.” — Adolf Hitler to Hajj Amin al-Husseini, November 28, 1941.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

In spite of prime minister Netanyahu's mis-statement that it was the Mufti of Jerusalem who persuaded the Nazis to exterminate the Jews, the storm of controversy he has ignited will have the positive side-effect of focusing attention on the Mufti's role as a collaborator with Hitler who never missed an opportunity to encourage and spread the Nazi genocide. Wolfgang Schwanitz, who authored with Barry Rubin 'Nazis, Islamists and the making of the modern Middle East'has waded in at Middle East Forum: In his 1999 autobiography, Schwanitz affirms, a senior Nazi official admitted how the Mufti advised Hitler and other leading Nazis, and that he acquired full
knowledge of the ongoing mass murder.

Dr Wolfgang Schwanitz: Mufti advised Hitler

After the [1914-1918] war, the thinking of Hitler and al-Husaini had
developed along parallel lines. Both the grand mufti and Hitler
developed the idea that only exterminating the Jews would let them
achieve their goals.

The writer Melanie Phillips has reproduced a passage from Schwanitz and Rubin's book:

"..The alliance between these two forces was
logical. Al-Husaini’s 1936–39 Palestinian Arab rebellion received
weapons from Berlin and money from Rome. In 1937, he urged Muslims to
kill all the Jews living in Muslim lands, calling them “scum and germs.”
But al-Husaini’s ambitions went further. He wanted German backing not
only to wipe out the Jews in the Middle East but also to make him ruler
over all Arabs. In exchange for Berlin’s backing, he pledged to bring
the Muslims and Arabs into an alliance with Germany; spread Nazi
ideology; promote German trade; and “wage terror,” in his own words,
against the British and French.

"...The Nazis were eager for this
partnership. They established special relationships with the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Ba’th Party, the Young Egypt movement, and radical
factions in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Berlin also hoped to build links
with the kings of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In 1939, for example, Hitler
met Saudi King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud’s envoy, Khalid al-Qarqani, telling
him: 'We view the Arabs with the warmest sympathy for three reasons.
First, we do not pursue any territorial aspirations in Arab lands.
Second, we have the same enemies. And third, we both fight against the
Jews. I will not rest until the very last of them has left Germany.'

“… But first, Hitler had to decide precisely how 'the very last' of the
Jews were to leave Germany. As late as 1941, Hitler thought this could
happen, in the words of Hermann Göring in July, by 'emigration or
evacuation.' Yet since other countries refused to take many or any
Jewish refugees, Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated
by the League of Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed,
mass murder would be Hitler’s only alternative. The importance of the
Arab-Muslim alliance for Berlin, along with the grand mufti’s urging,
ensured that outcome. And al-Husaini would be present at the critical
moment Hitler chose it.

“… Hitler gave al-Husaini a ninety-minute
meeting on November 28, 1941. Hitler’s preparatory briefing, written by
Grobba, stressed that al-Husaini was in tune with Germany’s ideological
and strategic interests… Al-Husaini thanked the German dictator for
long supporting the Palestinian Arab cause. The Arabs, he asserted, were
Germany’s natural friends, believed it would win the war, and were
ready to help. Al-Husaini explained his plan to Hitler. He would recruit
an Arab Legion to fight for the Axis; Arab fighters would sabotage
Allied facilities while Arab and Muslim leaders would foment revolts to
tie up Allied troops and add territory and resources for the Axis.
Hitler accepted, saying the alliance would help his life-and-death
struggle with the two citadels of Jewish power: Great Britain and Soviet
Russia.

“At that moment, the Third Reich was at the height of
its victories. German forces were advancing deep inside the Soviet Union
and nearer its border with Iran. General Erwin Rommel was moving into
Egypt and many Egyptians thought Cairo might soon fall. When the day of
German victory came, Hitler continued, Germany would announce the Arabs’
liberation. The grand mufti would become leader of most Arabs. All Jews
in the Middle East would be killed. When al-Husaini asked for a written
agreement, Hitler replied that he had just given him his personal
promise and that should be sufficient.

“...Considerations of
Muslim and Arab alliances, of course, were by no means the sole factor
in a decision that grew from Hitler’s own anti-Semitic obsession. But
until that moment the German dictator had left open the chance that
expulsion might be an alternative to extermination. When Hitler first
told Heydrich to find a 'final solution,'the dictator had included
expelling the Jews as an option. Already, the regime estimated. it had
let about 500,000 Jews leave Germany legally during seven years of Nazi
rule. Yet if the remaining Jews could only go to Palestine, and since
ending that immigration was al-Husaini’s top priority, emigration or
expulsion would sabotage the German-Arab alliance.

“Given the
combination of the strategic situation and Hitler’s personal views,
choosing to kill the Jews and gain the Arab and Muslim assets necessary
for his war effort was an easy decision. Consequently, Hitler ordered
the Wannsee Conference to devise a detailed plan for genocide. Since
this decision was linked to the alliance with al-Husaini he would be the
first non-German informed about the plan, even before it was formally
presented at the conference. Adolf Eichmann himself was assigned to this
task. Eichmann briefed al-Husaini in the SS headquarters map room,
using the presentation prepared for the conference. The grand mufti,
Eichmann’s aide recalled, was very impressed, so taken with this
blueprint for genocide that al-Husaini asked Eichmann to send an
expert—probably Dieter Wisliceny—to Jerusalem to be his own personal
adviser for setting up death camps and gas chambers once Germany won the
war and he was in power.”

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Historians have refuted Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion at the 37th Zionist Congress that Nazi
dictator Adolf Hitler did not initially plan to exterminate the Jews and
was convinced by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to 'burn them.' However, it is beyond dispute that the Mufti was aware of the Final Solution in Europe. He played an active part in sending European Jewish children to their deaths. He had his own plans to exterminate the Jews of Palestine and the Arab world - for which he sought approval from Hitler at his famous meeting with the Fuhrer in November 1941 - and even had plans for crematoria in the Dotan Valley. It is incontrovertible that the Mufti was an enthusiastic propagandist for the Nazis as their guest in Berlin. It is also a fact that the Arab world has never undergone 'de-nazification': the Nazi legacy of genocidal antisemitism is alive and well.

Ynet News reports:

"Professor Dan Michman, a world-renowned expert who is the head of the
Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University and Head of the
International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem said Hitler
did indeed meet the mufti – but this only occurred after the Final
Solution began.

Meeting between the mufti and Hitler in November 1941 (Photo: Heinrich Hoffman)

"He flew to Berlin," Netanyahu said of the mufti. "Hitler didn’t want
to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And
Hajj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, 'If you expel them,
they'll all come here.' 'So what should I do with them?' he asked. He
said, 'Burn them.'"

Netanyahu also said that the mufti was sought during the Nuremberg trials but managed to evade them.

He further noted that the mufti claimed Jews wanted to destroy
Al-Aqsa Mosque before the war, and "this lie is about a hundred years
old."

Yad Vashem's chief historian, Professor Dina Porat, told Ynet that
Netanyahu's statements were factually incorrect. "You cannot say that it
was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea to kill or burn Jews," she said.
"It's not true. Their meeting occurred after a series of events that
point to this."

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said Wednesday on Netanyahu's remarks:
"Of course Hajj Amin al-Husseini did not invent' the Final Solution to
the Jewish question'. History clearly shows that Hitler initiated it.
Hajj Amin al-Husseini joined him." He added that "the jihadist movements
today are encouraging anti-Semitism and lean on known Nazi heritage."

"No one needs to teach me how much of an Israel-hater the mufti was,"
wrote Herzog. "He gave an order to murder my grandfather, Rabbi Herzog,
and actively supported Hitler. But there was only one Hitler. Hitler
did not need Husseini to order the murder of Jews just because they were
Jewish."

Professor Meir Litvak, who teaches at Tel Aviv University's
Department of Middle Eastern History, said the idea of annihilating the
Jews came up in 1939. While the initial plan was to send Europe's Jews
to an area north of the Ural Mountains so that they would die of
disease, he said, the plan was nixed when the Soviet Union did not
surrender in 1941. At that point, Litvak said, the extermination idea
arose.

"Husseini supported the extermination of the Jews, he tried to
prevent rescuing of Jews, he recruited Arabs for the SS," said Litvak.
"He was an abominable person, but this must not minimize the scale of
Hitler's guilt."

“In the course of my research,” he continues, “I found
out that the story we had been told – that the Jews left the Arab
countries because they were Zionists – was for the most part wrong.
True, they had an affinity for the Land of Israel – that is certainly
correct – but the organized Zionist movement was very weak in the Arab
countries. The great mass of Jews left under duress. They were
expelled. They were subjected to such enormous pressure that they had no
choice but to leave.”

950,000 Jews were expelled from Algeria, Morocco, Iraq and other Arab
countries. They have no chance of getting their homes and businesses
back. Ever. Its finished. They also faced massive amount of heartache
and hopelessness, until they found a new home in Israel, and a minority
in Europe. And do you think they have forgotten about their trauma?
would you?

Would that give the right to Jews from the aforementioned countries
to go back and start stabbing and killing innocent bystanders in Algiers
or Baghdad? And what would it achieve? and how morally wrong would it
be? I leave the answer to you.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Although Judeo-Arabic will die with the last generation born in Arab countries interest in the rich and picturesque Jewish dialect seems to be undergoing a revival. Lyn Julius blogs in the Jerusalem Post:

When I was growing up as the daughter of Iraqi Jews, I used to think
that the language my parents spoke consisted largely of curses. My
mother would insult the object of her scorn with wakamazzalem ('May their luck run out'). Woudja ! was an expression of pain and Wi Abel ! (O mourning - from the Hebrew evel), an expression of dismay. An idiot would be called zmal ( a donkey) or booma (an
owl - anything but wise). Later, I discovered that there was more to
the Judeo-Arabic language. It had marvellously sonorous words like bezoona (cat), darboona (corridor) and teeteepampa (mattress fluffer - a trade now sadly extinct.)

A scene from the Dove Flyer, the first film to be made in Judeo-Arabic

The
Jewish dialect is more ancient than the Arabic spoken by Muslim Iraqis,
which was adulterated through the centuries by Beduin Arabic. The
Jewish version is closer to the Arabic spoken in northern Iraq and has
definite affinities with Aramaic.

As Churchill once said of
English and American English, Jews and Muslims were divided by the same
language. You will never hear a Muslim say 'abdalek' (Hebrew - kappara: 'I am your ransom').

The first film to be made in Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic was The Dove Flyer,
released in 2014, based on the book by Eli Amir. Over 100, 000 Israelis
went to see the film and not a few must have tittered to hear actors
bring to life their grandmothers' picturesque sayings, such as 'Jahrein bel fed al-bis' (Two bottoms in one pair of underpants), and Wutch Tisha'Bab (A sad face, such as one would sport on Tisha b'Ab, the Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the Temple.)

There have been several attempts to write a dictionary of Judeo-Arabic of Baghdad (JAB). Violette Shamash's memoir Memories of Eden contains a glossary of Judeo-Arabic terms, compiled with the help of emeritus professor of the Hebrew University Shmuel Moreh.

An
Ashkenazi Jew, Meir Lehrer, was forced to learn the language when he
was courting his future wife Caroline. She lived with her grandparents,
who knew no other tongue but Judeo-Arabic of Baghdad. He compiled a 55-page
phrasebook, complete with conjugating verbs and declining nouns. For
good measure Lehrer includes a curse or two: Thu-qut-I-un-uk: 'May your eyeball burst.'

Perhaps the most ambitious project to-date is the JAB Encyclopedia by
William Y Elias. As a young music lecturer on Western Music Notation in
Tel Aviv, Elias was asked in 1976 by his head of department to give a
course on the music of the Near East. His research into Persian terms
led Elias to begin collecting, with the help of a group of friends,
Persian, Turkish, Hebrew and words from another 10 languages which had
infiltrated into modern Judeo-Arabic.

The project burgeoned
into a venture spanning two decades. Instead of a simple dictionary,
Elias found himself engaged in a massive work reflecting the behaviour,
customs, education, religious beliefs and superstitions, even food, of
Iraqi Jews.

In September 2014 William Elias published a booklet with excerpts of the JAB Encyclopedia. To give three examples:

The word Makan
(place) originally referred to a list of places to which one could take
a horse-drawn carriage until the mid-20th century. These mkanat
included the Abbayana (the electric company off the central part of
Rashid St), Agd an-Nasara (the land and quarters of the Christians),
Alwiyya (a rather new area south of Bataween near the YMCA), etc. Dassan - dessana leqmis: he wore a new suit.To use something new for the first time, akin to Dissen
(Hebrew): he irrigated with oil, fertilised the land - the Biblical
custom of pouring oil (an anointment) on the head of a future king.

The word qara (literally, what enables one to read) was the
Friday evening lamp, a hemispheric bowl half full of water and covered
in a layer of oil, with tiny niches for inserting wicks for lighting
before the kiddus.
Elias's Encyclopedia took him 20 years, 24 advisers, amounts to 1, 500 pages and 15,000 entries and sub-entries.

Sadly, William Elias died in September 2015, before he could live to see his magnum opus in print.

The Elias family is seeking a sponsor to finance this major project. If you can help, please contact info@harif.org.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Mizrahi Jews in the US are divided on whether to tick a proposed 'Middle East' box on official US documents, the result of lobbying by Arab groups. Those who will still identify as 'white', interviewed by Haaretz, seem to think that if they have not experienced antisemitism, they would not be comfortable to be labelled as a ' Person of Color'. Some fear what the new category would be used for:

Persian Jews: too privileged to be labelled 'Middle Eastern'?

Young American Mizrahi Jews are unsure of what the new category will mean for them.

“I have always been identified as Caucasian,” San Francisco student Shira Yomtoubian told Haaretz. “I remember once I thought about writing Middle Eastern in ‘other,’ but I thought they would still consider it Caucasian.”

“I think it’s a great cause, that we would have representation, but on the other hand it could be used to tag Middle Eastern people,” Yomtoubian added. “And I don’t know if I want that. For example, when I go to the airport in the United States, I can’t tell you, every time I’m stopped. I think if you have any kind of features, I’m not upset about it, unless I’m in a hurry, but there is like this target. I’m wondering how they would use this information.”

Her fears are not baseless. After the September 11 attacks, the U.S. Census Bureau handed over databases with addresses of Americans of Arab extraction to security organizations.

“But I would check it,” added Yomtoubian. “I wouldn’t lie.”

Other Jews believe that the discrimination experienced by Americans of Middle Eastern origin is not serious enough to identify them as people of color, and that this definition is reserved mainly for Americans of African or Asian origin.

“Because I work as an activist, this question comes out a lot,” says Shaily Hakimian, a Jew of Moroccan parentage who works for an LGBT group. “Like, for example, we have a POC [person of color] hospitality suite where people can go and speak to other people. And because I haven’t been disenfranchised in the same way as a black person has, I don’t feel that is my space. I also don’t want to take any space that wasn’t meant for me.”

Hakimian adds that despite not looking white, she does not feel that people attach to her stereotypes they have of Middle Eastern or African people.

“The worst thing I remember was one time when I was ordering a burrito in college, and when I had to choose ingredients, the guy said, ‘You look like someone who likes olives,’” she recalls. “But I have benefitted from looking whiter. If there was a form I would check Middle Eastern, or else ‘other.’”

Questions about the privileges of American Jews also come up in a talk with Galeet Dardashti, a musician and anthropologist whose father moved to the U.S. from Iran.

“I myself do not identify as a ‘Person of Color,’” she says. “I see the POC label as very specific, referring less to the color of one’s skin and more to an experience of societal marginalization. I am notably darker than most Ashkenazim and I routinely get ‘randomly’ checked at the airport,” She notes that she recently received a full-body pat down in a private room.

“In general, however, I have experienced almost no discrimination in the U.S.,” she says. “While I certainly do not discount the experiences of other American Jews of Middle Eastern and North African background who have felt discrimination, this was not my experience. The worst thing I can remember was a high school classmate giving me a dirty look and asking if my family was Iraqi (conflating Iran with Iraq) during the First Gulf War. So, I personally don’t feel comfortable self-identifying as a ‘Person of Color’ from such a privileged vantage point.”

Sunday, October 18, 2015

An Israeli visiting the tomb of the prophet Nahum at al-Qosh muses widely about Iraq's Jewish history, the plight of the Assyrian Christians in the vicinity and whether the suffering of Iraq's peoples will come to an end. Never give in to despair, Yael Mizrahi Arnaud concludes in International Policy Digest:

A new roof protects the tomb of Nahum from the elements (photo: Yael Mizrahi)

To the Jews, the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea is holiest; yet due to repeated exiles at the hands of conquering
empires, Jews became known as “a people without a land.” Jews adjusted
to this reality in these very hills—‘beyond the river’ or ever ha nahar,
the biblical Hebrew term that denotes the region along the Euphrates,
modern-day Iraq. After being expelled from Jerusalem, following the fall
of the second temple in 70 AD, Babylon would become the spiritual,
religious, and cultural epicenter of Judaism for more than a thousand
years to come.

Despite the perennial longing for Jerusalem, Jewish life
flourished here. Babylonian academics outshone their Galilean
counterparts, evident in the emphasis placed on the Babylonian Talmudic
texts. It is here that the Jewish Oral Law, torah she ba’al peh,
passed down throughout generations—the laws were not merely codified,
but the inhabitants of these cities were entrenched in lively and
contentious debate. Conversations from 450 CE that we are still engaging
in today originate from these cities– Pumbdedita (current day Fallujah), Sura, Nehardea—they housed the great Yeshivas that gave rise to the Bablyonian Talmud.

“Nahum,” in Hebrew, means comfort, and while reading his prophesy
during my ride to the village, I searched for consolation in his words.
For my own sanity, for the belief that one-day the Iraqi people will
find comfort themselves. Nevertheless, my optimism is tested in this
place. When you’re able to put face to face with the ugliest
manifestations of what humanity is capable of; how life is cheap. It has
now become impossible to find an Iraqi family that hasn’t been affected
by the violence. The international media barely reports on the
continued loss of Iraqi life; attacks which are weekly occurrences, and
have been for the past 10 years.

Friday, October 16, 2015

The film-maker Pierre Rehov has just updated and made temporarily available for free viewing on Youtube his documentary, Silent Exodus, about the 856,000 Jews driven from Arab lands.

With the 30th November Day to Remember Jewish Refugees from Arab lands and Iran little more than a month away, organisations representing Jews from Arab lands have written to the Israeli Minister of Education urging him to make compulsory the teaching of the history of Middle Eastern and North African Jewry. This initative would have benefits both inside and outside Israel. Here is the text of their letter.

Dear Mr. Bennett,
As the November 30th Day of Commemoration for Jewish Refugees from
Arab Countries and Iran approaches, we representatives of the
international Mizrahi, Sephardic, and Iranian Jewish communities turn
our attention towards education of Israeli and Diaspora Jews about our
history and heritage. We commend your Ministry’s efforts to support this
cause by creating curriculum and teaching materials relating to the
history of Middle Eastern & North African Jewry. We are thrilled to
have a Minister of Education in office whose values are so aligned with
our own, in your championing of heritage studies, affirming the cultural
diversity of Israel and recognizing the importance of Mizrahi history.

So far, the Israeli government has left the teaching of Mizrahi
history and heritage to the discretion of schools. We ask that you
continue to support this initiative by ensuring that the Mizrahi history
curriculum be made compulsory and that all schools observe the Day of
Commemoration. As you know, Israeli students of all ethnicities and
cultural backgrounds must be given the tools to gain awareness and
understanding of Mizrahi history, as it is integral to the fabric and
foundation of Israeli society. In order to help disseminate the Day of
Commemoration curriculum internationally, we also request that the
educational materials be translated into English.

The upholding of the Day of Commemoration curriculum is vital not
only to Israeli Jewry but also to those of us in the Diaspora who are
not being exposed to the history of Jews from Arab countries and Iran.
Israel will set the precedent for Jewish education and Israel advocacy
in the United States and beyond. In western countries, students are not
being exposed to the history of Jews from Arab countries and Iran. Most
westerners, including Diaspora Jews, have a skewed understanding of Jews
as a homogenous European people without roots in the Middle East. In
turn, they lack an understanding of Israeli society and Israel’s role as
a multi-ethnic safe haven for Jews from all parts of the world. It is
vital for all students to learn that over 50% of Israeli Jews descend
from Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran.

By implementing Mizrahi heritage studies, students in the Diaspora
would be far better equipped to advocate for Israel. In order to effect
this change, and influence our Jewish institutions, we depend on Israel
to lead by example.
We have greatly appreciated all that you have done so far to carry
out this initiative, and look forward to your continued partnership.

Sincerely,

Sam Yebri, President30 Years After
David Dangoor, PresidentAmerican Sephardic Federation
Maurice Maleh, ChairmanAssociation of Jews from Egypt (UK)
Andre Dehry, PresidentFederation des Associations Sepharades de France
Lyn Julius, PresidentHARIF: UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa
Susan Azizzadeh, PresidentIranian American Jewish Federation
Levana Zamir, PresidentIsraeli Association of Jews from Arab Countries
Gina Bublil-Waldman, PresidentJIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa
Rabbi Ellie Abadie, PresidentJJAC: Justice for Jews from Arab Countries
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, International DirectorSephardic Education Center
Yehuda Azoulay, FounderSephardic Legacy ProjectIsrael is not a milkshake, Mizrahim are not the other

Thursday, October 15, 2015

According to the NGO Asl-Al Yahud, a Council for Jewish rights has been established in Kurdistan, the Kurdish regional government announced on 13 October 2015.

The objective of the new council is to preserve the
rights of Kurdish Jews in the territory, although they will not be represented in the Kurdish parliament.

It is estimated that there are nearly such 430 families. The Council will undertake projects to rebuild synagogues with the support
of the government of the territory. The Kurdish authorities see this initiative as furthering peaceful coexistence between communities and ethnic groups.
They maintain that there were "long periods in history when Kurdish Jews lived peacefully and harmoniously among different ethnicities and religions, bound together by love under one name".

The initiative seems to follow the release of a report on 8 October by the Middle East Research Instituterecommending better ethnic and religious representation in Kurdistan.

My comment: As almost all the 18, 000-member Jewish community was airlifted to Israel from Kurdistan in 1950 it is a mystery how 430 Jewish families might still be living in Kurdistan. There is certainly no organised Jewish community today.

This article puts forward the theory that thousands of Jews converted to Islam rather than move to Israel. These 430 families might be of mixed Muslim-Jewish ancestry.With the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, some of these families asked to emigrate to Israel. (Some have since moved back to Kurdistan).

Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest, however, that many thousands of Jews converted to Islam well before the creation of Israel. They are called Ben -Ju: Muslims with Jewish roots.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Controversy surrounds a wedding photo, taken in Israel, and exhibited as part of the Iraqi-Jewish Archive exhibition, now on at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California. Was the photo included by mistake, or was it given to a relative who lived in Baghdad, ending up in the basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police headquarters, along with thousands of books documents and artefacts seized from the Jewish community? Shlomi Eldar explains in Al Monitor:

Members of the Shohet family dispute whether this photo travelled from Israel to Baghdad

Once the artifacts were preserved, the decision
was made to exhibit them. When I went to see the exhibition, the photo
of the young couple at their wedding ceremony, surrounded by their
excited family, immediately caught my eye.

This is how I described the photo: “A photo of a bride and groom at
their wedding ceremony. The rabbi is holding the groom’s hand, and the
bride is clutching a bouquet of white flowers. The excited guests,
apparently family, can be seen behind them looking up. My parents have a
picture exactly like this … Do any of the readers recognize the people
in the photograph above?”
“It’s a picture of my parents,” Dor told Al-Monitor, “but its
provenance might disappoint you. It wasn’t taken in Iraq. It was shot in
Ramat Gan [Israel], at the Kehilat Yesharim synagogue in August 1959,
eight years after my parents immigrated to Israel.”

Yair’s father, Moshe Dor (Shohet), now 87, arrived in Israel from
Iraq as part of Operation Ezra and
Nehemiah, an Israeli-organized airlift that brought many members of the
Iraqi Jewish community to Israel during 1950-52. He enlisted in the army
and served in the Communication Corps, first as a soldier and then as a
civilian contractor, until he retired at age 65. His wife, Rina, nee
Aziz, had immigrated to Israel before him. They met in Israel and
settled in Ramat Gan, which absorbed more Iraqi immigrants
than any other city in the country. Rina worked for years as the
secretary of Na’amat, the women’s organization affiliated with the
Histadrut, until she retired. The couple had two children. Yair, the
eldest, was a career soldier in the Israel Defense Forces who retired
from the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

“My father was the first member of my family’s second generation
[those born in Israel] to get married,” Dor told Al-Monitor. “One of my
grandmother’s sisters flew to Istanbul to meet my father’s uncle, who
stayed in Iraq after almost all of the community had immigrated to
Israel, in 1951. She brought him the photo from his nephew’s, my
father’s, wedding. That uncle took the photo back to Baghdad with him.
The picture must have made its way to Saddam’s cellars after the Iraqis
seized all Jewish property. That is our theory.”

Dor said that neither he nor his family knows from which family
member in Iraq the photo was taken. “This picture hangs in my parents’
house, but also in my house and in my sister’s house too. It is the icon
on my cell phone, when my parents call. Of course, we were surprised to
see what happened to it. It’s a strange story, ” he said. “We knew that
the Iraqis seized all sorts of documents [belonging to Jews], but no
one would ever have expected to find it among those documents. It has
absolutely no value in terms of intelligence. Its only value is
sentimental.”

The government of Iraq and the National Archives are still engaged in a heated debate over
who actually owns the Jewish archive. The Iraqi government insists,
through its ambassador in Washington, that the archive must be returned
to Iraq. The Iraqis claim that an archive telling the story of a
community that lived in Iraq for centuries should be in the land of the
Tigris and Euphrates and displayed at the Iraqi Archives for the
public’s benefit. There are, however, no Jews left
in Iraq. The last members of the community to leave were Yair Dor’s
relatives. One uncle, Elias, immigrated to England in the early 1970s. A
second uncle arrived in Israel in 2000.

Maurice Shohet, son of Elias Shohet, now serves as president of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq,
based in New York. Obviously, the Iraqi Jewish organization is opposed
to returning the archive to Baghdad. In addition, Maurice Shohet
contends that the wedding photo of Dor’s parents was exhibited by
mistake. He claims it was part of a photo album of his childhood in
Iraq, which he donated to the National Archives.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

The American University of Cairo is today holding a tribute to Eric Rouleau, the prominent Egyptian-born journalist and diplomat. Interestingly, this article in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs about Rouleau by the anti-Zionist Alain Gresh (the natural son of the Jewish Communist Henri Curiel) is rather full of contradictions. He implies it is acceptable to be a francophile; emigration to the ex-colonial France is to 'the real promised land'. (In fact only 10, 000 Egyptian Jews fled to France, fewer than to Israel and to Brazil). It is acceptable to have Marxist leanings. The only thing that Gresh still holds beyond the pale is that 'narrow nationalism' - Zionism. Yet Gresh admits that Egypt was once tolerant of Zionism, supported by Jews who gave alms without intending to make aliya themselves. Gresh blames the Arab-Israeli conflict - not the intolerant reaction to it resulting in Egypt's scapegoating of non-Muslims - for the antisemitism which resulted in the expulsion of Jews like Rouleau.

Eric Rouleau, born Elie Raffoul in Cairo in 1926 , died in February 2015.(Photo: Al-Tanany publishing house )

"Elie Raffoul was not only Egyptian, francophone
and francophile, but he was also Jewish. Yet how can one define a Jew?
Anti-Semites tried in vain by inventing a race whose people they often reduced
to religion. Israel has failed, too, in that regard. After all, how can one use
the same term to describe believers and non-believers and people claiming to
have a more or less vague Jewish culture, and others who reject it? Is a person
Jewish by choice or is it the anti-Semite who makes the Jew, as Jean-Paul
Sartre put it?

" Just like
many young people, Rouleau faced an adolescent crisis and decided to become a
rabbi, but he soon quit and lost his faith. Although the world of Talmudic
studies definitely had a lot to lose, the field of journalism won considerably.
Now
turned atheist, Élie did not abandon his Jewish roots, but tried to
understand their meaning. At the time, incredible as it might seem, Zionists
enjoyed complete freedom of action in Egypt. The Jewish Agency was well-off in
Cairo and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, the Jewish National Fund, established in
1901 and destined to develop land for Jewish settlement in Palestine, welcomed
grants in synagogues. "Most often, the donors had no political incentive
and only wanted to give alms," Rouleau recalled.
Rouleau
later turned to the Hashomer Hatzair movement, the "Youth Guard," an
extreme leftist Zionist movement.

"The hundreds of adolescents who joined
the movement participated in sports competitions, took Jewish history classes,
and engaged in philosophical debates where the labor movement ideologists were
prominently present," he said.
Rouleau
learned about Marxist thought, but he left the movement a year later, as his
beliefs collided with its narrow nationalism and indifference to the conflicts
raging in Egypt, even those against the colonial power. "I could not
believe that all Egyptians were anti-Semitic, and I had no intention to
emigrate," he said.

"Egypt's
Jews felt they were Egyptian, and the Zionist siren song never bewitched them. In
his book Un homme à part that was
dedicated to Henri Curiel, Gilles Perrault beautifully wrote, "Apart from
the Zionist minority, no one felt the need for a Jewish state or the urge to
chant “L'an prochain à Jérusalem” when it was enough to take the 9:45 a.m.
train to get there.

"The
Arab-Israeli conflict made the lives of Egyptian Jews impossible. They were the
victims of waves of judeophobia in the Arab World, and of the Israeli
government's attempts to use them as fifth column. As a result, many were
forced to emigrate to France, the real Promised Land.
Nowadays,
criticism of Zionism is often equated to hidden anti-Semitism. Nevertheless,
during the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of Jews around the
world were apathetic if not hostile to the Zionist project. Rouleau took
himself for an Egyptian, and he was united with his compatriots beyond
religion.

Monday, October 12, 2015

"It's just a slogan, we don't mean it literally." The Yemeni authorities have dismissed the cry 'death to the Jews' as rhetoric. However, the latest threat," convert to Islam, or leave!" is being taken seriously by Druze MK Ayoub Kara. Today he went to see Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss what might be done to save the few Jews remaining in the war-torn country. Informative article in the Washington Post.

Chief rabbi of the Jews in Yemen Yahya Yosef Mosa with his family
carries a picture of the ousted president of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh in
in his home in Sanaa.
(photo :REUTERS)

"We need to act fast to get them out and we will do that, God
willing,” Ayoub Kara, a Druze lawmaker with the right-wing Likud party, told the Jerusalem Post. Kara says that he had been contacted by a Yemenite Jew who had escaped the country by pretending to be a Muslim.

Yemen is in the midst of a civil war that the United Nations says has killed over 2,300 over six months.
The capital of Sanaa is currently held by a group called the Houthis, a
Shiite rebel group that originated from northwestern Yemen's Saada
province and toppled the U.S.-backed government earlier this year. Since
May, the Houthis have faced a Saudi-led coalition that supports exiled
President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Inspired by Iran, the regional
Shiite power accused of backing the Houthi rebels, the Yemeni group
have used anti-Semitism as a rallying cry for over a decade. “Death to
America, death to Israel, damnation to the Jews," goes a slogan widely
used by the Houthis, though the Houthis themselves have suggested that
no one should worry about it.

Earlier this year, the New York Times' Rod Nordland said that
when he talked to a Houthi leader, he was told it was "just a slogan,
we don't mean it literally." Houthi authorities have said that their problem is with Israel, not with the Jews who live in Yemen.

Yemen's
Jewish community have a history in southern Arabia that stretches back
to the time of King Solomon. After the rise of Islam, they appeared to
have a tenuous though mostly peaceful relationship with their Muslim
neighbors, though there were periods of violence and pogroms. Following
the creation of Israel in 1948 there were anti-Semitic riots in the
southern Yemen port of Aden. Over the next few years, British and
American planes transported tens of thousands of Jews out of the country
for a new life in Yemen: The mission was nicknamed Operation Magic
Carpet ride.

In
the years that followed, many other Jews left the country, fleeing not
only persecution but also the chaos and fighting that flared up in the
country. According to Charles Schmitz, a professor of geography at
Towson University and an expert on Yemen, most of the Jews that remained
in the country lived in the far north, near the Houthis traditional
power base, without too much friction. However, as the conflict in Yemen
intensified over the past 15 years, the Houthis developed a "rigid
religious ideology," Schmitz explains.

As The Post's Sudarsan Raghavan wrote in 2009,
when the Houthi rebels began their fight against the government in the
early 2000s, they would often target Jewish property. In 2007, the
Jewish community in Saada say they were sent an ultimatum: "You should
leave the area, or we will kidnap you and slaughter you," is how one
rabbi described it. A number of members of the Jewish community were
killed. Ali Abdullah Saleh, then the president of Yemen, stepped in to
help the Jews in Yemen's north, relocating them at government expense to
a gated community known as Tourist City near Sanaa.

When Saleh
was toppled from power in 2012, some Jews expressed fears for their
future. "He ran Yemen like a fiefdom, he neglected people and stole
natural resources, but as a Jew my family and I were protected by
him," Suleiman Habib, one of the small number of Jews remaining in
Tourist City, told Time Magazine. Saleh
does still remains a powerful force in Yemen. However, in the chaotic
Yemen of 2015, he has found himself allied with the Houthis: He himself
comes from the same Zaydi Shiite sect that forms a key part of the
Houthi identity. A spokesperson for Saleh's office told the Jerusalem Post that Kara's concerns about Yemen's Jews were unfounded.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)